Collegiate Times

Image: 2013-03-20 21:01:51

Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t want to freak you out, but more crime is committed on this day than any other of the year.

Millions of people have simultaneously decided the laws no longer apply to them, and we have plunged into a three-week span where one vice in particular is not just accepted, but is actually encouraged.

The vice? Gambling. The culprit? March Madness.

Dramatization aside, it’s amusing how once a year, everyone conveniently forgets gambling on sports is technically illegal.

I have no room to talk, of course. I run a fantasy golf league and a fantasy football league, which both have buy-ins. I have put $10 on every Super Bowl and NBA Finals for the last five years, and in high school, I legitimately tried to make the argument that poker is a sport and should be in the Olympics.

What can I say … gambling is fun.

But on this day, my love of throwing money on sporting events becomes a national pastime.

People fill out their brackets, pay a relatively small buy-in and enter pools with friends in the hopes of winning big.  They even prepare for it months in advanced.

They do research, watch the regular season, and some even go as far as to actually listen to Dick Vitale’s shrill voice blabber on, as his transition to being completely senile becomes more and more obvious.

Not that any of it helps, of course  — especially not that last one — as the winner is pretty much always the person that thinks a three-pointer is a type of isosceles triangle (yay geometry) and makes picks based on mascots.

At one point, I was one of those people that followed college basketball meticulously. I could make compelling arguments as to why I picked certain teams to do well, and I even won $300 in high school when I won a league with a bunch of my dad’s friends.

However, that victory was an anomaly, and realizing this, I adopted a new game plan last year: I go out of my way to watch as little college basketball as humanly possible. This way, when a moron who knows nothing wins the pool I’m in, there’s a chance I will be that moron.

Last year, when I first tested my idea, it worked tremendously. Sure, I ended up finishing in second to my dad because we tied and I went with the bold life decision of not filling out the tiebreaker, but I still think it was effective.

Now, it’s time to put it to the test for a second time.

The task of avoiding college basketball is easy enough for me. I have NBA League Pass and prefer to watch the best of the best duke it out than see some 5’9” white guy that will be an accountant in two years miss open jump shots but try really hard while doing so.

I will say, though, it certainly helps my cause that Virginia Tech is so miserable at basketball.

Because of this, I would like to thank athletic director Jim Weaver for my inevitable success, for had it not been for his terrible handling of the firing of Seth Greenberg that was responsible for our recruits decommitting and Dorian Finney-Smith transferring, Tech might have been good and I might not have been able to avoid watching college basketball.

OK, that was probably a low blow, but still.

So, with an infinite lack of wisdom on my side, I have decided that Duke and Georgetown will make it to the finals, with Duke winning it all.

Why? I couldn’t tell you. But at this moment, my bracket is perfect, as far as I’m concerned

And if you’re not in any of the pools I’m in, I wish you the best of luck, and let us pray that our brackets won’t be completely hopeless by the end of the weekend.

Just know that when your bracket is ruined, you can take solace in the fact that the Masters is less than a month away, and I will be organizing a pool for that as well. As always, it’ll be a $10 buy-in.

A version of this article appeared in the Mar 21 issue of the Collegiate Times.